SPX notes

• Between me and Fantagraphics, we sold every copy of Set to Sea in the room. At leat 75% of them passed through my hands and received a fairly elaborate sketch. At the end of the day, my sketchin’ hand was weak and trembling.

• Sketching at shows goes against every single grain of my OCD nature (improper tools; little time; no corrections possible and done right on the book; sent off without documentation) but that the more I do it the more I successfully squelch those misgivings.

• I missed getting a copy of Aaron Renier’s “Walker Bean!” He apparently brought about a dozen copies which he sold out of in the walk from the elevator to the convention floor. I did get Kevin Huizenga’s “The Wild Kingdom” and Vanessa Davis’s “Make Me a Woman,” which are both quite lovely. I wonder if Vanessa is poised to make some kind of crossover into a more mainstream book market? “Make Me…” wouldn’t look out of place in a Barnes & Noble display island. I traded with my pal Nate Neal for a copy of his massive “Sanctuary” book, a dense and dark pit of a comic.

• If you’re the kind of person who’s too embarrassed to ask how much a beer at the hotel bar is beforehand, it’s about $7. There’s a liquor store a couple blocks away. The guy working there was really friendly, and opened the store for us even though we were a few minutes past closing. He even made recommendations about the specific ABVs of various malt liquors.

• At these comics shows, I feel like I’ve been sorta-introduced to approximately half of the people in the room, and remember approximately 1/100ths of their names. I get in the mode where I’m just smiling and nodding at anyone who glances in my direction. I usually remain in this mode for several days after I get back home.